Natalie Diaz on PBS Newshour

Natalie Diaz grew up on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation on the border of California, Arizona and Nevada. She left the reservation to play basketball for Old Dominion University in Virginia and later for professional leagues in Asia and Europe.

While she was in college, she also began to write poetry. Her first collection of poems, "When My Brother Was an Aztec," has just been published. Many of Diaz's poems deal with the harsh realities of reservation life: poverty, teen pregnancy and meth-amphetamine drug addiction.

Two years ago, Diaz felt a calling to return to the reservation to help preserve the Mojave language, which is rapidly being lost. A profile of Diaz and her language preservation work will air on the NewsHour soon, but here above is sneak peek of our interview with the 33-year-old writer, conducted along the banks of the Colorado River.